Cloud, On-prem ... We've Got The Network Service To Rule Them All, Says AWS

AWS has announced the general availability of AWS Cloud WAN, its managed service that can be used to bring together all your infrastructure in the cloud and across multiple sites into a unified global network.

Cloud WAN is a managed wide area networking service that AWS says will make it easy for customers to build and monitor a global network connecting resources in on-prem environments with the cloud. Well, Amazon’s cloud, at least.

The service was unveiled as a preview in December of last year, but is now generally available, which means that cloud giant is fairly sure it has ironed enough of the kinks to put it into production.

According to AWS, Cloud WAN connects a customer’s networks, but also allows them to define network segments to isolate sensitive network traffic from other data, and propagate these across the global WAN thus created, via centrally defined policies and automation.

For this purpose, AWS provides a central dashboard for making connections between an organization’s various sites, such as datacenters and branch offices, plus any Amazon Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) it operates, potentially allowing a global network to be built in a short space of time.

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These connections can be made through the AWS Site-to-Site VPN, AWS Direct Connect, or via third-party SD-WAN products, and the central dashboard provides a complete view of the network in order to monitor network health, security, and performance. Cloud WAN automatically creates a global network across AWS Regions by using the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP).

AWS said that customers are looking to decrease the complexity of their infrastructure so they can focus on their applications and other business priorities, but that large organizations face the difficulty in managing their various networks that are likely using a mix of technologies.

Using AWS Cloud WAN makes it simple for organizations to connect all their islands of infrastructure and removes the need to configure and manage different networks individually using a variety of network technologies, the cloud giant said. However, it could also be seen as another service that makes customers ever more dependent on AWS for critical parts of their infrastructure.

The AWS Cloud WAN is now available in AWS regions across the US, Asia Pacific and Europe, and in Canada, the Cape Town region in Africa, and Bahrain in the Middle East. ®